1
And truly it is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire, and
always, when men do it who can, they will be praised or not blamed
Machiavelli, The Prince, III
1492 was a pivotal year for Empire. Spain became unified with the conquest of
Granada, and king Ferdinand acquired much of the newly discovered territory of the
Americas. Another Spaniard, Rodrigo Borja—father of Cesare Borgia—became pope,
taking the name of Alexander VI. A contemporary of these men, Niccolò Machiavelli
thus lived in a period when imperial expansion took on monumental proportions and the
empire of virtue, the Catholic Church, came under control by a man with more than
merely religious designs. For Machiavelli, the world of power was suffused with the
desire to acquire.
Contrary to some recent interpretations of the Florentine’s legacy, Machiavelli
cannot be understood primarily as a lover of freedom.
1
One of the striking characteristics
of Machiavelli scholarship is that it has tended to pay little attention to Machiavelli’s
understanding of Rome qua empire, preferring instead to focus on his analysis of its
republicanism. This is especially surprising since, historically, we have come to know
Rome principally as an imperial state;
2
and because Machiavelli wrote much about
Rome’s imperialism. In fact, Machiavelli was a theorist of power who admired the
strength and durability of states that could come to gain imperial characteristics. In his
1
The reading of Machiavelli’s legacy as that of principally recovering classical civic republicanism
underscores his valuation of liberty (Skinner 1975, 2000; Viroli 1998; Skinner, Viroli and Bock 1990).
Sullivan (1996) also joins the chorus that praises Machiavelli’s love of freedom. Other commentators seek
to place Machiavelli at the fount of modern democracy. However, Machiavelli’s main focus is power per
se, not liberty; and, as Harvey Mansfield has shown, Machiavelli in fact does not believe a pure democracy
is possible (See Mansfield 1996, p. 92).
2
As Strauss affirms, in the West we have a vast amount of common knowledge of Rome (p. 113).
Convention